Tony Duell wrote: Fantastic! Thanks, Tony. My first priority is to hook it up to a monitor because 80-column mode on a TV isn't very pleasant. I've had the top off and photographed the innards. The next job will probably be to upload the EPROMs that contain the ROS (Resident Operating System?) and BASIC so I can disassemble them. I've already dumped the keywords for BASIC. I've not worked out what all the commands in the Front Panel program are yet, but I can see that it uses some bank-switching mechanism for the ROMS. That wasn't entirely unexpected, because I've often wondered how CP/M can put programs in low memory where you'd need a ROM because the Z80 starts execution at location 0. (This isn't a CP/M machine, but it is one generation on from the 380Z, which I also used at school). My machine doesn't have the IEEE-488 or network connectors, although it does have the network DIP switches.

Tony Duell wrote: Six on the bottom, four for the keyboard and another four for the Mini Station Options board, which is largely unpopulated. I can see from the mismatched screws on the bottom that it has been taken apart many times before! Poking all the RAM locations from Front Panel gave me that impression, along with a few crashes, but hey, Reset and straight back into Front Panel! I think that the high res graphics are also I/O mapped, which is why they are so slow. I wrote a sprite routine for the 480Z, but it was only flicker-free for sprites with a width of 20 pixels or fewer, because I had to output to one port to give me a time window to the RAM, and then pump bytes containing four pixels through another port. I wish I'd kept all those listings now.

Hi, Yep, that was the first micro I really got to know. We had a 380Z at school too. We got it around 1977/78 and it was a cassette based system running an early version of COS (Cassette Operating System) - the floppy disc and CP/M options weren't quite available then. Hours of fun programming in BASIC and CECIL....best of all was the front panel, we had no assembler until the CP/M systems (finally) arrived in 1981 so it was the only way we had of playing with machine code (amazing how quickly you learn those hex codes when you have to). I'm sure I still have a set of 380Z manuals somewhere (BASIC, COS, HiRes Graphics Option etc) but my CP/M discs I suspect are long gone. TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Hi Tony, Ah yes, "TEXED" I really liked that one too; especially since when I started using WordStar many of the commands were the same. :-) We never had the tiny Pascal or MDOC packages. ZASM was neat, probably the first assembler I ever used in fact! Yeah, we had fun with that too. Strangely enough the original cassette based 380Z belonged to the maths department (along with the Teletype linked to a mainframe many miles away....I don't know what it was, but I do recall it printed out "TTFN" when you logged off (hence the "TTFN" at the bottom of my messages) and the word "MAXIMOP" appeared somewhere in the log in banner). The four disc based machines, when they appeared went to the physics department though. They got a Beeb about the same time too. It's strange, I've only ever seen two non-disc based 380Zs. The one at school and the one I saw reviewed in some computer magazine of the day. I've also seen two different types of disc based machine, one with the drives mounted horizontally (the most common IME) and one type with them mounted vertically. Yes, I saw one at the Drayton Rally a few years back. I'd have bought it but I'd just cleaned myself out buying an Apollo DN3500 (a "FULLY OPERATIONAL" system which I found was devoid of RAM when I got it home). Of course, I've not seen one since. :-( I'm going to be doing battle with the room in which these manuals are stored in a day or two. I'll have a look and see exactly what I have....I do recall seeing a COS source listing at school, but I don't think I have a copy myself (worth checking though). TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Hi Tony, Yep, it was one of the nicest text editors I've ever used. I'd never spotted the similarity to TECO until you mentioned it....I've only ever run TECO some four or five times, but it felt familiar IYKWIM? Rings a bell, but I can't say I remember the program. Would I be right in assuming that the machines with SA400s had double sided drives and the ones with Canon drives were single sided? Our "horizontal" machines were all double sided (the top drive was "A:" & "C:" and the bottom was "B:" & "D:") and I'm sure I remember reading that machines with single sided drives were available too. I wonder if that's the same machine I spotted? The chap who had it for sale ended up taking it home with him at the end of the day, I'm sure he was someone who used to do the rounds of the rallies. Never seen one of those, though I vageuly recall reading something about them in one of the manuals. I'll be keeping my eyes open for a 380Z of any description this rally season....hmm, wonder when Drayton is? TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Hi Tony, Ah well, another otherwise fine theory shot down in flames.... :-) No, the one I spotted had no keyboard, software or manuals. So that makes at least two "spotted in the wild".... *NICE* setup. Only one of our machines had the hires card (funnily enough the one with the "free" RAM card) and it was darn useful.... TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

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Hi Tony, Possible I suppose, he was looking for manuals and discs. I did offer to give him my set of manuals but he never did ring me about them. Quite, it was the highest resolution display I'd used at the time - the only other machines I'd used to any great extent at the time were a PET, a Nascom II and my ZX-80.... We never had the colour option. :-( Yep, back in those days you pretty much ALWAYS got at least the schematics with such equipment. It's something I really miss....and I was more than a little miffed that my ZX-80 (pre-assembled) didn't come with such documentation when it finally arrived. TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Hi Tony, Sort of like D/A converters made from an R/2R resistor ladder and a buffer stage? Ah, so that's what the cutout was for. Yes, even Tandy used to supply schematics with all of their equipment in those days. I still have my first cassette recorder (a CTR-40) and my "air band" radio, both of which came from Tandy and both of which came with schematics - as did both the multimeters I bought from them for that matter. I don't know if it's cost cutting or a philosophy of "it's cheaper to replace it than fix it", but it's annoying the lengths you have to go to nowadays to get schematics and/or service manuals. :-( TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Hi Tony, You're right of course, my brain was operating in "PC" mode.... Many of the TRS-80 manuals were available until quite recently I understand. Sadly (?) the Tandy stores here in Birmingham are all too often little more than mobile phone/radio controlled car shops these days - don't even think about asking for a catalogue.... What really got me, was that they also printed the schematic on a sticky label inside the back cover of my radio - needless to say it was so small as to be unreadable. Full marks for trying though. Quite. :-( A friend an I once tried ordering a service manual from JVC for an HRD-725EK VCR, I ended up digging one up at a rally and my friend ended up getting one mechanical parts out of JVC though - eventually - which arrived with a letter telling us in no uncertain terms that they would not deal with us again and directing us to a service centre! Nothing like good customer service is there.... TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Hi Tony, Actually, I wasn't aware of that. It certainly explains a lot though.... Damn, I missed that. :-( We've were using "HRS" and "Wiltsgrove" until recently. Sadly, about 18 months ago both companies decided they'd only deal with account customers, which makes dealing with them nigh on impossible now. :-( Funnily enough, the parts we were after from JVC were little plastic gears/rollers too. I don't blame you, I've stuck with Panasonic VCRs myself ever since. Good idea!! TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Peter Pachla wrote: I have CP/M system disks for the RML380Z. E-mail me if interested. - don

Peter Pachla wrote: I don't believe my school was that early, though COS rings a bell, so presumably that entire bootrom including Front Panel was called COS, even though we actually justed booted 31K (and later, 56K!) builds of CP/M. Our machines had twin disks. Later on, we bought two 480Zs (in black, to match) and a Memotech MTX512. At first, two maths teachers were conscripted into teaching 'O' level Computer Studies, which involved talking about core memory and learning BASIC. I first saw some core memory about three weeks ago when a colleague pulled some out of a cupboard, 20 years after I first heard about it. Perhaps it's time for another trip to the Science Museum. My school only taught Computer Studies for four years, because teaching about computers was quickly displaced by learning about computers in other subjects. Oddly enough, they were most enthusiastically employed by the History department, because one of the teachers was involved in the development of an archaeology program called DIG. CESIL, Computer Education in Schools Instructional Language. CESIL was hilarious. We had an interpreter for it, written in BASIC so that it ran many times more slowly than BASIC, despite looking like assembler, with instructions like JIZERO. I was straight back to BASIC or machine code (entered in the Front Panel) at lunchtimes. Absolutely. Our assembler only took 8080 mnemonics, so I continued using the Front Panel and DATA statements in BASIC.

Hi, I'm not sure....it's been a while. I do recall though that at one point we had a pair of cassette recorders running on the machine, COS had PET like support for them. Our original cassette based system I think had just 16K of RAM. All the CP/M based machines were 32K machines....apart from one which had been mistakenly shipped with 64K. :-) Never seen the 480Z (except for photos). Those Memotechs were nifty machines. I used to have a pair of 512s and a 500 with the SDX disc upgrade. I wish I'd kept that one now, I've only ever seen the FDX mentioned in the Memotech literature - never the SDX. It was a unit that attached the the "cartridge" port on the left of the machine (same shape as the machine, about 3" wide) and had a BBC like drive attached via a ribbon cable. Same at our school. Luckily ours were a bit more knowledgable....that said the emphasis was still on stuff like core memory etc since that's what was on the exam paper. I think at my old school the computer science stuff was taken over by the science department after I left. Then later on they created a "computing" department. The one we had was a stand alone interpreter, it booted from cassette just like BASIC did. I kind of liked it. Although it was too simple to be of any real long term use it was interesting.... But then I'm biased, I know a bunch of high level languages, but I've always been an assembly language programmer by choice. That'll have been the standard CP/M assembler, we had ZASM too which accepted Z80 mnemonics (thank goodness, I've never liked Intel's assembly language syntax). TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Hi Tony, Hmmm, I'm racking my brains but I don't recall any external unit. For some reason I seem to recall both cassette recorders attaching to seperate DIN sockets on the back of the machine...? But then again my memory of this is very hazy....it was 1979.... Yep, that's exactly what happened....we obviously got a machine which was intended for someone else.... Yes, we had the top off ours numerous times. I remember reading an article on the machine where they went into quite a bit of detail on the bus....including how to build your own boards. I *THINK* I recall them remarking how similar the bus was to the SS-50 bus, BICBW. Believe me, I know the problem.... TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Hi Tony, Quite possibly, one of the technicians from the science dept was always fiddling with it until they got their own machines. Either that or I'm remembering incorrectly (quite probable). Woah, back up there....TTL level??? Our machine *MUST* have been modified then (or been of an early design) since we used an unmodified cassette recorder with it....it was a silver Hitachi unit and was connected via a DIN connector rather than MIC/EAR (we had to plug a special plug into the EAR socket to mute the speaker). No external boxes in sight, motor control seemed to be via a relay inside the machine? I *THINK* on our setup the "first" recorder could both record and playback data and the "second" was playback only. But as I said before, my memory is hazy. It's not something you see much nowadays is it.... I'm probably confusing it with another article in the same magazine then - might've been a review of an "Explorer 85" or some such machine. Fair enough, the biggest thing I've "lost" so far is my DECMate II....I know it's in a box around here somewhere.... TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

Hi Tony, :-) I've got a feeling that my set of manuals is also for the disc based systems. <later> OK, I've gone and dug them out. I'm fairly certain that these are all that I have: 380Z Disc System Users Guide (CP/M 2.2 Users Guide) 380Z Disc System (Information File) Extended BASIC Version 5 For Disc Systems (Reference Manual) Extended BASIC Version 5 High Resolution Graphics Level 2 (Supplement) 380Z Disc BASIC Release Notes. ZASM Z80-Assembler (printed on a dot matrix printer) TXED REFERENCE CARD High Resolution Graphics Reference Manual COS 3.4 Reference Manual COS 4.0 Differences from COS 3.4 No real mention of cassette systems. It does state in the "Information File" that only 40-column display machines have the cassette interface, it being omitted from the 80-column display card. Just as an aside, I *THINK* that's the same cassette recorder which appeared in early Atari advertising as the "410" (I have a b/w photo of one labelled thusly and sat next to an Atari 400). Needless to say the real 410s were nothing like these. I'm wondering, did the Hitachi recorder allow for motor control via the DIN socket? ISTR coming across the odd cassette recorder then which did allow for this. I ask as I'm certain we had computer control of the motor on ours, but I don't recall there being a lead which attached to the "remote" socket. They also mention such a plug being used to turn off the recorder's internal condenser microphone. Now I am really confused....I only recall us using a single "dummy plug" in the recorder.... Pretty much the same in my copy I'm afraid. It mentions there being some sort of switch on the unit, and also mentions that the convention is to wire up the first recorder for playback only and the second for recording only. Other than details of how to make your own lead that's all there is in my manuals. TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | www.wintermute.org.uk --

What's the exact message? It sounds probably that you need to replace the NVRAM, around $20. Look for the NVRAM faq on the 'net for better info on it. On Tue, 28 Mar 2000 Technoid(a)cheta.net wrote:

Technoid(a)cheta.net wrote: I bought mine from www.mouser.com. $20 a year ago. or sales(a)mouser.com hth jeff

Search out the sun eeprom faq and it'll have all the info on the SGS thompson chip, reprogramming it etc. Sounds like the battery on the chip is weak and is lasting through only short reboots. Bill

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